More than any other personnel decision former President Donald Trump, the president-elect now, has made for his incoming administration, his decision to pick attorney Kash Patel to lead the FBI as the bureau’s next director has electrified Trump’s most ardent supporters.
That’s not to say his supporters are unhappy with any of the other selections–they’re not.
Trump’s supporters are very fired up about all of them so far, and excited as the former president builds out his comeback administration. But there’s something about the Patel selection that has really got the base jacked up and excited.
President @realDonaldTrump has made America safer & more just by his nomination of Kash Patel as Director of the FBI. He will be a worthy successor to my friend, Christopher Wray.
— Robert C. O'Brien (@robertcobrien) December 1, 2024
Kash Patel is the perfect pick. He will restore LAW AND ORDER and end FBI corruption.
— Tommy Tuberville (@TTuberville) December 1, 2024
Clean house! #MAGA https://t.co/hS6KnXM6g5
I served as Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley’s chief counsel for nominations—the job responsible for the confirmation of the FBI director.
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) December 1, 2024
Kash Patel will win Senate confirmation.
He’s unquestionably qualified.
He’ll bring much-needed reforms to a broken, corrupt FBI. https://t.co/mvtXBEEUFV
BREAKING: President Trump just announced that Kash Patel will be the next Director of the FBI.
— Congressman Troy E. Nehls (@RepTroyNehls) December 1, 2024
Another excellent pick.
Congratulations! pic.twitter.com/W0uqHwS5nv
Kash has guts! pic.twitter.com/bjgLPHYif5
— Former Congressman Matt Gaetz (@FmrRepMattGaetz) December 1, 2024
— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) December 1, 2024
The raw energy with this selection may be because Patel is viewed as one of the movement’s most aggressive fighters–he was critical in the effort to undercut in Trump’s first term the Russia hoax against the then-president and then later led counterterrorism efforts in the White House–but it’s perhaps even more because of the distrust American conservatives have in the FBI over the past several years that finding someone who just will not appease the world’s preeminent law enforcement agency’s bad actors and will aim to steer the bureau back towards actually enforcing the law and away from political witch hunting.
Several of the top moments of the last decade in these internecine major fights that have defined the Trump era in U.S. politics–from the email scandal that plagued Trump’s 2016 Democrat opponent former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Russia hoax after Trump’s first win to the post-2020 election January 6 prosecutions to the raid of Mar-a-Lago over the documents case and many, many more–have seen the FBI at the center of them all. Trump’s decision in his first term to fire James Comey as FBI director and appoint Christopher Wray was a hugely monumental decision.
Patel said the documents marked classified at Mar-a-Lago and seized by the National Archives in February were already declassified by Trump. https://t.co/EbWXxrCKOD
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 5, 2022
Wray has panned out to be just as protective of the institutional interests of the FBI as anyone else in the “deep state,” a massive disappointment for Trump’s faithful.
The beauty of this incoming second Trump term, though, is it’s a second chance not just for Trump himself but also for the broader America First movement. Second chances in American politics are very rare, if not non-existent, so this precious opportunity for the former and soon-to-be-reinstated President of the United States represents a historic shot at real change–an effort to get it right this time–and actually reform the agency.
